Preparing your eCommerce website for increased traffic

If you run an eCommerce website, there’ll inevitably be certain times of the year when you’re bound to experience overwhelming levels of increased traffic. Here’s how to prepare for them…

Whether Black Friday, Christmas or simply a Saturday afternoon in the middle of February, all eCommerce websites experience high levels of increased traffic at certain times of the year and, if your website isn’t prepared for such attention, it can cause some major problems, leading to a decline in visitors, reputation and, of course, sales.

How to prepare your eCommerce website for increased traffic

In reality, running an eCommerce website, or online shop, over a particularly busy or popular time can be a bit of a headache if you’re not prepared for it – seeing traffic increase by potentially thousands of sessions an hour which, if your server isn’t up to it, can easily crash your whole site.

So, what should you do to ensure your website is prepared for increased traffic?

Audit your website: ideally, you should be auditing your website; checking for and repairing broken links, ensuring your content is up-to-date, and all of your pages are loading at a good speed.

Test your cart: it may seem a little obscure, but your shopping cart needs to work properly in order to maximise your sales – if people can’t put your items in their shopping cart, they essentially can’t buy from you!

Update your pictures: whether walking round the shops or browsing online whilst sipping a cup of tea and watching Homes Under the Hammer, consumers like to see what they’re buying; making sure all of your images work and are of high quality will help to guarantee those all-important sales.

Ensure your site is robust enough: if you’re running a special promotion, and you’re doing it well, traffic to your website will double, triple or quadruple within those magical 24 hours – make sure your site can handle this massive spike in traffic without choking up. Any lapse in speed or functionality will see your sales suffer.

Sit back and enjoy the sales rolling in

Once you’ve done all this, you should be ready to sit back and enjoy thesales roll in. And once the busy period is over?

Well, why not consider Pay Per Click advertising and remarketing to capture some repeat custom from those newly satisfied customers?

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